Wednesday, May 02, 2007

I reported last month on how Hanway Films and Celluloid Dreams merged to form Dreamachine. Here's my first story on that new union.

They've now snapped up the rights for worldwide sales and distribution on Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha. The film is only the second non-documentary in Broomfield's pantheon after Diamond Skulls though the two couldn't be more different.

Haditha is cast entirely with unknowns who are improvising every scene from a pre-set treatment. The events portrayed are to be pretty much a reenactment of actions carried out by US Marines in 2005. Here's a summary of those events, according to The Washington Post:

...while out on patrol in the Euphrates River town of Hadithah, northwest of Baghdad, a U.S. Marine convoy was attacked in the Subhani district, either by an improvised explosive device (IED) on the road and/or by insurgent snipers. One Marine lance corporal was killed in the attack.

Evidently in retaliation, but certainly in defense, the Marines opened fire, shooing and killing civilian bystanders in a taxi and two nearby homes. Some two dozen civilians have been reported as being killed that day. A Marine later on the scene said the bodies showed execution-style killings, including gunshots to the head.

News reports of the incident allege that the Marines killed unarmed civilians without provocation.

Of course, another version of the story claims that insurgents used the civillians as human shields but the consensus is, I believe, that the former is true, that the human shield story is nothing more than a cover up - and this is, presumably, how Broomfield's film will render the scenes.